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rogerthat View Drop Down
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Points: 9869 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 29 2014 at 05:24
Originally posted by Gerinski Gerinski wrote:

Another one which is funny to us non-English natives is that English does not have as a verb 'to can', but you have to use the relatively complicated expression 'to be able to'. The fact of 'being able to' something is a very fundamental life item, and all the other languages I speak have a word for it, 'poder', 'pouvoir', 'potere'...  It's funny that English didn't bother to make a verb for this very essential concept in life.

That's very interesting.  I translated that Spanish sentence of yours through Google translate to see how it would possibly form in English.  You cannot form a sentence like that in English: "In the lifetime, you must a power to feed your children".  It would be grammatically incorrect.  Additionally, I speak three Indian languages and in neither would I able to form a sentence like that. The formation would be similar to "be able to".  I wouldn't have to use be able to but there are other functions I would have to use to basically place a verb there which is missing in the above sentence.  A sentence somewhat similar to what you said would be like this: "In life you must have the power to feed your children."; I am now using "power" and also eliminating "be able to".  This is the way I would have to write it in Hindi, Marathi or Tamil too.  I find it very intriguing that you can in fact eliminate either "have" or "be able to" and still form a grammatically correct sentence in Spanish.  It basically turns my grammar world upside down because the grammar structure is, give or take a few quirks and nuances, not very different fundamentally as between English and those three Indian languages and I have always taken it for granted that the words, rather than the sense of grammar, differ across languages.  Apparently that is not the case; figuratively, even whether the earth is flat or round may depend on what language one speaks.


Edited by rogerthat - August 29 2014 at 05:26
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Points: 10970 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 29 2014 at 05:26
^ I wouldn't trust Google Translate with sentences. It's probably good only for single words.
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Points: 9869 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 29 2014 at 06:03
I wanted to say that as well.  Looking for confirmation from Gerinski that the sentence as written in Spanish would not in fact have a verb (i.e poder itself acts as a verb).  You can use "power" as a verb, as in "power through" but not in that specific context as there it describes the quality of possessing strength or ability and power acts as a noun to describe said quality.  As per what Gerinski said, poder would have to both supply that description as well as be used in the action sense of the word.  

Edited by rogerthat - August 29 2014 at 06:03
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Points: 9869 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 29 2014 at 06:06
By the by, I had in fact typed one Spanish word at a time from that sentence and pieced together the resulting sentence myself, not trusting Google Translate to translate a full sentence correctly.
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Points: 19942 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 29 2014 at 06:34
Originally posted by Gerinski Gerinski wrote:

Another one which is funny to us non-English natives is that English does not have as a verb 'to can', but you have to use the relatively complicated expression 'to be able to'. The fact of 'being able to' something is a very fundamental life item, and all the other languages I speak have a word for it, 'poder', 'pouvoir', 'potere'...  It's funny that English didn't bother to make a verb for this very essential concept in life.
 
Surely "can/able to" is only a "verb" when linked to some other action anyway. "I can" on it's own is meaningless unless linked to another verb e.g. "I can walk". Presumably that's the same in French with "je peux" (sorry, it's a long time since my French O level).
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Points: 5091 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 29 2014 at 06:38
Originally posted by rogerthat rogerthat wrote:

I wanted to say that as well.  Looking for confirmation from Gerinski that the sentence as written in Spanish would not in fact have a verb (i.e poder itself acts as a verb).  You can use "power" as a verb, as in "power through" but not in that specific context as there it describes the quality of possessing strength or ability and power acts as a noun to describe said quality.  As per what Gerinski said, poder would have to both supply that description as well as be used in the action sense of the word.  
It's not that 'poder' (which does indeed also translate as the noun 'power') 'acts as a verb'. It is a verb in Spanish, and also their equivalents in French, Italian, Portuguese and Dutch (in Catalan too but I will leave that since it's a less important language).

In Spanish we have a saying that 'querer es poder' which translates to 'wanting is being able to', meaning that if you really want something badly you will find the way to achieve it. Now, in Spanish (and French, Italian, Portuguese and Dutch) these are two verbs in infinitive form. English has this feature that the continuous stands frequently as infinitive: we actually say 'wanting is being able to' (two continuous) but if we translated literally we should say 'to want is to be able to', and some Spanish who knows very little English and speaks like Tarzan will likely say 'to want is to can'.

Try it in google translate, from the English 'wanting is being able to' into:

Spanish: 'querer es poder' (two infinitives)

French: 'vouloir c'est de pouvoir' (two infinitives)

Italian: 'volere e potere' (two infinitives)

Portuguese: 'querer e poder' (two infinitives)

Dutch is slightly tricky because google translate does not pick the right meaning as default and it will translate to 'willen is de mogelijkheid om' which actually means 'wanting is the possibility to' but if you click on the alternative translations for 'is de mogelijkheid om' you will see that one of them is 'is het kunnen' which is the infinitive form of the verb which we would translate as 'to can' if it existed in English.

Surely as Dean pointed the verbs in these Latin languages are related to the noun 'power', but not in Dutch where the noun 'power' is 'macht' and has nothing to do with the verb 'kunnen'. Incidentally 'to power' is also a verb in English, but you use it only meaning 'supplying the required energy to' but not for the meaning of 'being able to'.
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Points: 5091 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 29 2014 at 06:40
Originally posted by chopper chopper wrote:

Originally posted by Gerinski Gerinski wrote:

Another one which is funny to us non-English natives is that English does not have as a verb 'to can', but you have to use the relatively complicated expression 'to be able to'. The fact of 'being able to' something is a very fundamental life item, and all the other languages I speak have a word for it, 'poder', 'pouvoir', 'potere'...  It's funny that English didn't bother to make a verb for this very essential concept in life.
 
Surely "can/able to" is only a "verb" when linked to some other action anyway. "I can" on it's own is meaningless unless linked to another verb e.g. "I can walk". Presumably that's the same in French with "je peux" (sorry, it's a long time since my French O level).
Tell that to Obama LOL
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Points: 37575 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 29 2014 at 06:44
The problem with online translators is they cannot tell the context of where a phrase or word is used so some external intelligence is needed transcribe the text correctly.

Out of idle curiosity I just fed 'En la vida debes poder alimentar a tus hijos' into several online translators and they all returned: 'In life you need to feed your kids' which is (evidently) not the correct translation as Gerard described it in context, but by playing around with the suggested alternatives was able to come up with 'In life you must be able to feed your children'

and so from that we can arrive at "In life you must have the power (n: ability) to feed your children"


Edited by Dean - August 29 2014 at 06:45
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Points: 9869 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 29 2014 at 06:47
Hmmm, thanks for that Gerinski.  Intriguing.  So this means this is the accepted form of expression in not only Spanish but other languages derived from Latin whereas English has diverged from it.  I agree with chopper, in English, a verb standalone does not mean anything.  It has to be linked to another action. To achieve an equivalent of what you wrote in Spanish for "wanting is being able to", I would have to use noun forms there and make it "Want equals ability" or something like that but that would be clumsy and the essence of the original statement would be lost.
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Points: 9869 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 29 2014 at 06:52
Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:


Out of idle curiosity I just fed 'En la vida debes poder alimentar a tus hijos' into several online translators and they all returned: 'In life you need to feed your kids' which is (evidently) not the correct translation as Gerard described it in context, but by playing around with the suggested alternatives was able to come up with 'In life you must be able to feed your children'



As I said in an earlier comment, on feeding it one word at a time, I got "In the lifetime you must a power to feed your children",

En la vida = In the lifetime

debes = you must

poder = power

alimentar = feed

a =  a

tus hijos = your children

This presents a problem, as Gerinski said.  We cannot eliminate a verb in this way in English because that would be grammatically incorrect.  It is interesting that those languages efficiently eliminate a verb there, using power as a verb.
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Points: 5091 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 29 2014 at 07:01
Originally posted by rogerthat rogerthat wrote:

[QUOTE=Dean]

poder = power


Check the alternative translations, you will see that it says:  verb: 'be able to', 'can', 'may'
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Points: 5091 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 29 2014 at 07:03
but yeah, 'can' is not a normal verb, it has past (could) but no infinitive, no future and no continuous (while in Spanish it does have all of these tenses).



Edited by Gerinski - August 29 2014 at 07:04
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Points: 37575 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 29 2014 at 08:49
This would explain why the current trend of using nouns as verbs is so irritates some Brits but is more acceptable to Americans who, perhaps, are more used to hearing colloquial English as spoken by Spanish speakers. We could say that the act of converting a noun to a verb is 'to verb' the noun and this trend is 'trending'. In English the verb form of power is 'to power' 'powered, 'powers' and 'powering', all of these are the action of having power, from which we get the enabling verb, 'empower' (and that is probably a closer transliteration of 'poder'). 
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Points: 8543 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 29 2014 at 08:59
Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

This would explain why the current trend of using nouns as verbs is so irritates some Brits but is more acceptable to Americans who, perhaps, are more used to hearing colloquial English as spoken by Spanish speakers. We could say that the act of converting a noun to a verb is 'to verb' the noun and this trend is 'trending'. In English the verb form of power is 'to power' 'powered, 'powers' and 'powering', all of these are the action of having power, from which we get the enabling verb, 'empower' (and that is probably a closer transliteration of 'poder').


To power is the action of giving power as well (often in this case, it is synonymous with charge). "I can't leave yet, I'm still powering my (electric) car." Empower can only be used in feminist settings. Only feminists can be "empowered".    But seriously, I've never heard empower used with inanimate objects. "My car is powered by electricity (not empowered)".
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Points: 5091 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 29 2014 at 10:37
Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

In English the verb form of power is 'to power' 'powered, 'powers' and 'powering', all of these are the action of having power, from which we get the enabling verb, 'empower' (and that is probably a closer transliteration of 'poder'). 
Not really, 'to empower' is not translated as 'poder' but as 'dar poder(es)' = literally 'to give power(s)'. We do not use 'poder' either as the verb which in English is 'to power', for that we would normally use 'alimentar' which is literally 'to feed'. 'Poder' as a verb translates most naturally as 'being able to'.
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Points: 37575 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 29 2014 at 12:38
 
Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

In English the verb form of power is 'to power' 'powered, 'powers' and 'powering', all of these are the action of having power, from which we get the enabling verb, 'empower' (and that is probably a closer transliteration of 'poder'). 

Originally posted by The Doctor The Doctor wrote:

 
To power is the action of giving power as well (often in this case, it is synonymous with charge). "I can't leave yet, I'm still powering my (electric) car." Empower can only be used in feminist settings. Only feminists can be "empowered".    But seriously, I've never heard empower used with inanimate objects. "My car is powered by electricity (not empowered)".
Correct. Empower means 'to give power' in the sense of giving authority so an inanimate object cannot be the subject.

Originally posted by Gerinski Gerinski wrote:

Not really, 'to empower' is not translated as 'poder' but as 'dar poder(es)' = literally 'to give power(s)'. We do not use 'poder' either as the verb which in English is 'to power', for that we would normally use 'alimentar' which is literally 'to feed'. 'Poder' as a verb translates most naturally as 'being able to'.
Yeah, I used transliterate because I knew that 'empower' does not translate as 'poder' but couldn't think of the correct alternative to the word translate in the sense I was trying to convey, which is as an ability, capability or capacity to do something rather than the the act of doing it (which is the normal use of a verb formed from a noun). As you say, you use different words for the act of doing power. 
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Points: 2673 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 29 2014 at 13:22
Further and farther. When do you use each of these words?
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Points: 5091 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 29 2014 at 13:30
Originally posted by Metalmarsh89 Metalmarsh89 wrote:

Further and farther. When do you use each of these words?
As a non-English native I'm surely not the right one to answer but let me tell you what I was taught: Farther when it is about physical distance, further when it's about non-tangible-distance concepts.
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Points: 8543 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 29 2014 at 13:30
Simple way to look at it is farther = greater distance; further = to a greater degree. When talking about spatial distance use farther...when talking about anything else use further.

Correct, Gerinski.

Edited by The Doctor - August 29 2014 at 13:30
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Points: 2673 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 29 2014 at 22:55
My intelligence has been furthered.

Thanks Doc.
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